Editorial: Senate likes to work in secret and at night

Thursday

Mar 28, 2013 at 2:00 AM

While the rest of the world slept, New York's state senators spent the night passing packages of bills that will turn into the state's upcoming budget once the Assembly comes back from its holidays and tackles the same subjects and the two iron out differences.

While the rest of the world slept, New York's state senators spent the night passing packages of bills that will turn into the state's upcoming budget once the Assembly comes back from its holidays and tackles the same subjects and the two iron out differences.

The state Senate held this not-so-unusual marathon in response to criticism of the way it has done some business in the recent past, using the technique of handling legislation through a "message of necessity" so that it could hold an immediate vote instead of allowing laws to age for three days as required. Allowing the aging process to run its course made the bills ripe for action late Tuesday so the state senators started working at 9:30 p.m. and continued until after 4 a.m.

Several groups that monitor the activities of legislators and are not hesitant to criticize were almost as busy as the senators, pointing out that a marathon session in the middle of the night to ratify legislation that had been worked out in secret with a few leaders taking part and reporting back to their party members was not the best way to run a democracy.

That did not sit well with the sleep-deprived No. 2 man in the state Senate, Thomas Libous. First he and his colleagues take heat for rushing bills to a vote under the message of necessity. Then they get flak for staying up all night and dealing with the bills as they become eligible. Those who are so quick to criticize should "get real jobs," he sputtered.

Or perhaps he and his colleagues, extending that definition to those in the Assembly as well, could do their work in a more timely fashion. They could start earlier in the session, hold hearings during normal working hours without secret meetings and deals, allow the various parts of the budget to age in public and with dignity, all leading up to votes that people could watch.

Libous says he does not understand the complaints because the Legislature is on the verge of passing its third on-time budget in a row after years of failing to meet the deadline. For that performance the legislators deserve credit. Now, they need to do the work of the public in public and the public will stop complaining about both the process and the results, focusing instead on the job these legislators do and not the way they do it.